Der Aufsatz untersucht das Verhältnis von Persönlichkeit und Verhalten in der Defi nition und Diagnostik des Autismus von Kanner und Asperger in den 1940er Jahren bis in die neueren Ausgaben des DSM und ICD. Dazu unterscheidet er drei verschiedene epistemische Zugänge zum Autismus: ein externes Wissen der dritten Person, das über Verhaltensbeobachtungen, Testverfahren und Elterninterviews gewonnen wird; ein stärker praktisches Wissen der zweiten Person, das in der andauernden, alltäglichen Interaktion bei Eltern und Betreuer*innen entsteht, und schließlich das introspektive Wissen der ersten Person, d.h. der Autist*innen selbst. Dabei resultiert die Kerndifferenz in der Behandlung des Autismus daraus, ob man meint, die Persönlichkeit eines Menschen allein über die Beobachtung von Verhaltensweisen erschließen zu können oder ob es sich um eine vorgängige Struktur handelt, die introspektiv zugänglich ist, Verhalten prägt und ihm Sinn verleihen kann. Die Entscheidung hierüber führt zu grundlegend anderen Positionierungen zu verhaltenstherapeutischen Ansätzen, wie insbesondere zu Ole Ivar Lovaas’ Applied Behavior Analysis.
At the end of the 1960s, during the Criminal Law Reform in West Germany, the Social Therapeutic Facility was set up as an independent institution that was intermediary to the penal system and psychiatry. It was intended to treat offenders who had been certified by experts in court as having serious personality disorders and were not fully responsible for their crimes. The article analyses how this indication was interpreted in the selection of male test persons in two North Rhine -Westphalian social therapeutic model institutions. The psychologically abnormal perpetrator personality, it is argued, was increasingly depathologised and normalised in the course of the 1970s through psychological diagnostics, while at the same time psychotherapeutic procedures were adapted to the prison environment.
This article examines the interconnections between medical science and politics on the eve of the advent of colonial rule on the West African coast by means of the example of James Africanus Beale Horton (1835–1883), one of the first West Africans to receive medical training in Britain and to serve as a medical officer in the British Army. As he is known today as a political author, Horton’s scientific work has hitherto been largely neglected in the historiography. His work as a medical officer and his research as an ambitious medical scientist allowed him to develop elaborate proposals for hygiene policy reforms. Furthermore, angered by emerging European race theories, he set out to refute prejudices against Africans and to draft self-governing West African states. This article seeks to demonstrate how scientific research helped a mid-nineteenth-century African scholar legitimise himself as an authoritative doctor and situate himself within European political and academic paradigms.
Ende der 1960er Jahre entstand während der Großen Strafrechtsreform in Westdeutschland die Sozialtherapeutische Anstalt als dem Strafvollzug und der Psychiatrie zwischengelagerte eigenständige Institution. Sie sollte Straffällige behandeln, denen Gutachter vor Gericht eine «schwere Persönlichkeitsstörung » attestierten. Der Beitrag analysiert, wie dieses Indikationsmerkmal bei der Auswahl männlicher Probanden in zwei nordrhein-westfälischen sozialtherapeutischen Modellanstalten ausgelegt wurde. Die psychisch abnorme Täterpersönlichkeit, so die These, wurde im Verlauf der 1970er Jahre durch psychologische Diagnostik zunehmend entpathologisiert und normalisiert, während gleichzeitig therapeutische Verfahren an das Umfeld des Strafvollzugs angepasst wurden.
In 1974, the Swiss citizens voted against a popular initiative aimed at reforming the health insurance, launched by the Swiss Socialist Party. They refused as well a less ambitious counter-proposal elaborated by the government. This failure of the left-wing reformers is worthy of interest. This was, indeed, the main attempt until now to implement a healthcare subsidization based on social funding that would provide a wide risk coverage. In fact, shortly after the vote, the emerging economic crisis rather reinforced the advocates of a limitation of social welfare benefits. This durably hindered the political Left’s hopes of transforming in depth the Swiss healthcare system. The 1974 failure of the socialist initiative thus contributed to strengthen the conservative model, which received support from right-wing forces and the business community.
Recent research on the history of medicine has shown that during the 18th century, the pharmacological market has steadily expanded. For medical practitioners, this influx of novelties triggered constant challenges to the process of cure assessment. This study analyses six historical controversies surrounding new remedies in Geneva during the first half of 19th century. The overview of fifty years of therapeutic questioning shows how Genevan practitioners managed to judge the usefulness of a specific remedy on the basis of observations – usually quite numerous – and how they started to elaborate methodological principles underlying a populational approach.
This study explores malaria in its social and physical environment in Greece, the most malarious country in Europe, and also the one most heavily infested with falciparum malaria, at a time estimated to have coincided with the highpoint of the worldwide prevalence of the disease.[…] The central question of this study is how malaria interacted with the new social and economic realities that emerged in Greece after independence " (pp.2, 12).With these words, Katerina Gardikas, associate professor in Modern Greek History at the University of Athens, summarizes aptly the subject of her book Landscapes of Disease.Malaria in Modern Greece; namely, the study of malaria in Greece within the context of the new social and economic realities from the 1830s, when the country emerged as a modern state, up to the mid-1970s, when malaria effectively disappeared.From this perspective, the fi rst introductory chapter, entitled Malaria: An Ancient and Global Disease, presents briefl y malaria's emergence and evolution worldwide, as well as in Greece.By stressing the non-linear character of the disease's evolution and the fact that "[c]limatic fl uctuations as well as ecological and social factors contributed to its distribution" (32), the author gives us an insight into malaria's journey from antiquity up to our days.In chapter II The Fragmented Geography of the Disease, the author aspires to "investigate the geographic, climatic, and social environments of stable and unstable malaria in Greece and situate malaria in its various landscapes" (47), within the context of the fi rst public health measures in the nascent Greek state, which was "a medical terra incognita" (57) for the sanitary reformers.Through the study of four nationwide surveys (1901, 1905, 1906, 1907), as well as through six case-studies in various areas (Elos, Orkhomenos-Lake Copais, Petalidi, Sopoto, Gerli-Farsala, Fanari-Karditsa) along with the case of postwar Euboea, Gardikas adopts "a medical-geographical approach with an emphasis on landscape, thus including society, culture, and local particularities" (67) to indicate malaria's ubiquitous, as well as seasonal and unstable character that becomes quite apparent "in the painful shifts between mild endemicity and epidemic outbreaks" (115) in the Greek territory.Chapter III, entitled Malaria in Peace and War, discusses the effects of peace and war on the epidemiology of malaria, taking as a given that "[m]alaria responds differently to times of peace and times of war" (151).First, the author examines a series of parameters in peace time (i.e., agriculture, irrigation and grazing, drainage and wastelands, fi shing, migration and labor, colonisation, manufacture) and their impact on malaria's evolution in the countryside, along with the examination of urban malaria.Besides, "[u]rban malaria was one of the two initial causes for data collection on disease, the other being malaria in the army" (201).From this perspective, she then examines the impact of war through a number of interesting examples up to WW II, when, quite characteristically, "[m]osquitos were considered the 'second enemy', after the resistance groups" for the Nazis (256-257).In chapter IV Patients, Doctors, and Cures, Gardikas deals with the malaria patient and his/her relationship to treatment, physicians and health care.From this perspective, the author discusses a series of important issues; among others, the social variables and gender variations regarding malaria, and the gradual medicalisation of childhood (e.g., chil-
Lehrwerk für den Masterstudiengang Sexuelle Gesundheit an der Hochschule Luzern -Soziale Arbeit versteht sich der Band als Beitrag zur Professionalisierung der sozialen Arbeit in den Handlungsfeldern sexueller Gesundheit.Dabei bieten die Autorinnen einen allgemeinverständlichen Überblick über die Geschichte von Sexualität und Reproduktion seit 1750
